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Uncertain future for Sydney-Hobart flyer

David Beniuk

Sydney to Hobart race flyer Loki faces an uncertain future after backing up its 2011 handicap victory with a second placing this year.

Considered capable of collecting a swag of overall wins, the 19-metre Reichel/Pugh yacht is likely to be put up for sale by poker machine mogul Stephen Ainsworth.

Ainsworth, a co-owner of gaming machine company Aristocrat, recently declared his 15th Hobart race would be his last, saying he was keen to avoid the $40,000 insurance bill for his yacht and take up cycling.

Loki was confirmed as overall runner-up on Sunday, after crossing the line fifth, behind history-making Wild Oats XI by just two hours on corrected time.

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Only the early powerhouse northerlies tailor-made for the super-maxi appear to have stood in the way of Loki claiming the first back-to-back handicap wins in 47 years.

Four years old now, it holds numerous race records, while Ainsworth looks certain to collect the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia's six-race Blue Water Pointscore prize.

"We were confident going in and we were not too shabby - second overall, first in division," Ainsworth said.

"It doesn't get much better, especially for my last race for a while.

"I learned from poker machines how to quit while you're ahead."

Queensland yacht Black Jack, fourth across the line, finished third overall, another two hours back on corrected time.

"We always saw Black Jack as our biggest threat," Ainsworth said.

"We could see her and Lahana ahead of us on the Tassie coast and thought, 'We've got them on time'.

"It was a fast, warm and relatively easy race till we ran into the southerlies in the last 100 miles - that's when we knew Wild Oats XI probably had it.

"We beat all the boats we wanted to, so we're happy with how we went."

Black Jack owner Peter Harburg, who named his boat after Jack Brabham, said tough southerlies off the Tasmanian coast had been the difference.

"We fell into a hole ... Loki sailed close to the coast and didn't suffer," he said.

"It was 38 knots at one stage and freezing cold all of a sudden. I asked the guys if we were in Antarctica."

Among those on the 50 boats to have made it home by early Sunday evening were 32-race veteran Bruce Taylor on Chutzpah, Paralympian Liesl Tesch on Sailors With DisABILITIES and Sydney yachtsman Warwick Sherman, diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, on Occasional Course Language Too.

"I don't know which was worse, the chemo or the race," Sherman said.

Twenty-one boats remained at sea with the race suffering only five retirements.

The last boat in the fleet, Sean Langman's 1932-built Maluka of Kermandie, was expected in Hobart on New Year's morning.